Chestnut leaves - for a challenge

 

The October challenge of 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken' is about patterns in nature, almost abstract. Of course I have been doing patterns with the tree bark peintings but for this challenge I wanted something else. 

Now it is Autumn, the leaves of my chestnut tree are falling and I picked up two leaves of different sizes. These I used to make a template out of paper as the leaves were dry andcrumbling.

The template was used for the drawing of my pattern. 

The leaves on top were drawn with ink. After that hed dried I started painting using only a few colours. The ink did bleed a bit but I really like the result.

While painting I adapted my first plan and this is the result I submitted for the challenge.

The information about the materials I have used, the size and availability of this work and - if you are interested in my original artwork - my contact information can all be found in my Tumblr blog.

Branch patterns

 

This is the last work I made during our painting week, still using an abstract background and painting on top of that. Our teacher Ad van Aart asked me to paint only branches on a background, in a way that the trees would not be in the painting - going as abstract as possible for me after this week.

This time I chose a blue background, simply because the other colour choices did not seem 'right'. The branches had to have a contrasting colour and yellow or orange do limit the choices in contrasting colours very much - only a very dark blue or brown are options on such a background. Using a blue background I could still chose brown, but also a dark red or violet and even a dark green.

For this painting I decided to use another earth colour with a violet shade that could be light when using a lot of water or very dark and opaque with just a little water to paint easier.

Because the trees were to be out of sight I painted large branches coming in from all directions and added smaller branches - using a smaller brush - to the composition of the large ones. While at work I decided to use one of the lighter spots of the background to show a glimpse of that background - or sky - and make the branch pattern a little less dense around it.

While painting I have used other line patterns for my branches than I used in the 'Trees in the foreground' paintings (which have sharp angles), the branches in this painting have rounded curves and angles.  Filling the whole paper like this was a lot of work, in the end it became almost meditative and I enjoyed working like this very much.

The information about the materials I have used, the size of this watercolour painting and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.